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Informatics

Duncan Hull
61 posts

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November 30, 2011
08:45 AM
184 views

Fifteen years of extensive scientific research reveals the best* curry house in Manchester!

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

Curryology, the branch of science that deals with curry, is an established discipline with a long and distinguished history. The myriad ingredients of curry, such as curcumin (in turmeric), capsaicin (in chilli pepper), cumin, coriander and many others have been a topic of extensive scientific research [1,2,3,4,5].

Like many large British cities, Manchester is blessed with a large population of people from Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. All this means there is a bewildering array ........ Read more »

Bettaieb, I., Bourgou, S., Wannes, W., Hamrouni, I., Limam, F., & Marzouk, B. (2010) Essential Oils, Phenolics, and Antioxidant Activities of Different Parts of Cumin (Cuminum cyminum L.). Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 58(19), 10410-10418. DOI: 10.1021/jf102248j

Silva, F., Ferreira, S., Queiroz, J., & Domingues, F. (2011) Coriander (Coriandrum sativum L.) essential oil: its antibacterial activity and mode of action evaluated by flow cytometry. Journal of Medical Microbiology, 60(10), 1479-1486. DOI: 10.1099/jmm.0.034157-0

Ringman JM, Frautschy SA, Cole GM, Masterman DL, & Cummings JL. (2005) A potential role of the curry spice curcumin in Alzheimer's disease. Current Alzheimer research, 2(2), 131-6. PMID: 15974909

Bode, A., & Dong, Z. (2011) The Two Faces of Capsaicin. Cancer Research, 71(8), 2809-2814. DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-10-3756

September 22, 2011
11:59 AM
116 views

I Can't Get No Job Satisfaction

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

Job satisfaction is like a complex mathematical equation that needs to be balanced. There are many factors that contribute to the mix, both good and bad. Hopefully the good things about a job will outweigh the bad. But what are the good things that contribute to the elusive but crucial job satisfaction?... Read more »

Ariely, D., Gneezy, U., Loewenstein, G., & Mazar, N. (2009) Large Stakes and Big Mistakes. Review of Economic Studies, 76(2), 451-469. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-937X.2009.00534.x

August 15, 2011
04:42 AM
462 views

Wikipedia: I Fought the Lore and the Lore Won

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

Fighting the lore of wikipedia is an increasingly futile battle but there are people who resist using and improving the online encyclopedia. The remarkable thing is that some of this resistance comes from the scientific and academic communities, two groups of people who are supposedly concerned with the dissemination of knowledge. Wikipedia is the lore With [...]... Read more »

Neil L. Waters. (2007) Why you can't cite Wikipedia in my class. Communications of the ACM, 15-17. DOI: 10.1145/1284621.1284635

Patricia L. Dooley. (2010) Wikipedia and the two-faced professoriate. WikiSym '10 Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration. DOI: 10.1145/1832772.1832803

Alexander L. Bond. (2011) Why ornithologists should embrace and contribute to Wikipedia. Ibis, 153(3), 640-641. DOI: 10.1111/j.1474-919X.2011.01135.x

Logan DW, Sandal M, Gardner PP, Manske M, & Bateman A. (2010) Ten simple rules for editing Wikipedia. PLoS computational biology, 6(9). PMID: 20941386

June 28, 2011
03:31 PM
534 views

Impact Factor Boxing 2011

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

[This post is part of an ongoing series about impact factors] Well it’s that time again. The annual sweaty fist-fight for supremacy between the scientific journals, as measured by impact factors, is upon us. Much ink (virtual and actual) has been spilt on the subject of impact factors, which we won’t add to here, other [...]... Read more »

Karageorgopoulos, D., Lamnatou, V., Sardi, T., Gkegkes, I., & Falagas, M. (2011) Temporal Trends in the Impact Factor of European versus USA Biomedical Journals. PLoS ONE, 6(2). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0016300

June 19, 2011
08:08 AM
559 views

Sunday at the Lab with Uri Alon

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

Ah Sunday, a day of rest, recuperation and roasted food… Unless you’re a scientist, that is. This one goes out to all the committed high-calibre, driven individual scientists [1] who are spending this Sunday working at the bench. This amusing little ditty is written by systems biologists Michael Elowitz and Uri Alon (lyrics below), and performed here by Uri [...]... Read more »

Elowe J. (2010) [Workaholism: between illusion and addiction]. L'Encephale, 36(4), 285-93. PMID: 20850599

May 1, 2011
04:02 AM
598 views

Myopia, Hubris and Amnesia: Three Reactions to Innovation

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

According to Arthur C. Clarke [1]: New ideas pass through three periods: It can’t be done; It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing; I knew it was a good idea all along These three stages can be summed up as Myopia, Hubris and Amnesia. Which sounds a bit like the famous misquote [...]... Read more »

Benford, G. (2008) Obituary: Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008). Nature, 452(7187), 546-546. DOI: 10.1038/452546a

April 28, 2011
04:36 PM
677 views

Are machines taking over the planet?

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

Talk of machines taking over the planet is the stuff of science fiction but if world domination was just a simple numbers game, some machines have already “taken over” from their human masters. One machine, the particular brand of computer processor found inside all iPhones and lots of other electronic devices, has been quietly spreading [...]... Read more »

Fitzpatrick, J. (2011) An interview with Steve Furber. Communications of the ACM, 54(5), 34. DOI: 10.1145/1941487.1941501

Steve Furber. (2011) Biologically-Inspired Massively-Parallel Architectures: A Reconfigurable Neural Modelling Platform. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 6578(2). DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-19475-7_2

Steve Furber, & Steve Temple. (2008) Studies in Computational Intelligence. Computational Intelligence: A Compendium, 763-796. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-78293-3_18

April 1, 2011
01:53 AM
473 views

Circular logic is the best type of logic because it’s circular

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

One of the great things about logic is there are so many different flavours to choose from. If you thought that logic came in just one flavour (vanilla), then think again. Now, I Am Not A Logician but I can’t help but marvel at the bewildering array of logical flavours on offer including, but not limited [...]... Read more »

Laursen, L. (2009) Computational biology: Biological logic. Nature, 462(7272), 408-410. DOI: 10.1038/462408a

March 11, 2011
01:51 PM
627 views

Drop the Digital Dummy!

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

Here is an experiment to investigate dependence on your “digital dummy”. A digital dummy is any computer, smart phone or other digital device on which you suckle data like a baby. Delete all your so-called “social networks” on LinkedIn, Facebook etc. Being sat in front of a computer is distinctly unsociable. Give your twitter account [...]... Read more »

Flisher, C. (2010) Getting plugged in: An overview of Internet addiction. Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, 46(10), 557-559. DOI: 10.1111/j.1440-1754.2010.01879.x

December 22, 2010
11:21 AM
420 views

Happy Christmas Lectures 2010

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

As Tom Lehrer once sang on his winterval carol: “Christmas time is here, by golly, Disapproval would be folly, Deck the halls with hunks of holly, Fill the cup and don’t say ‘when.’ Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens, Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens, Even though the prospect sickens, Brother, here we go [...]... Read more »

Mark Miodownik. (2005) Facts not opinions? Devoloping both the physical and aesthetic properties of materials. Nature Materials, 4(7), 506-508. DOI: 10.1038/nmat1416

December 8, 2010
12:03 PM
461 views

Science Careers: The Good, The Bad and The Starry

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

Of all the things you can do with a Science degree, being paid money to stargaze from the top of a volcano in Hawaiʻi has to be one of the more interesting. Tom Kerr is one such lucky astronomer who has been managing operations at UKIRT (UK infrared telescope) – currently the world’s largest telescope dedicated [...]... Read more »

Song, I., McCombie, J., Kerr, T., & Sarre, P. (2007) The 3.3-μm PAH emission band of the Red Rectangle. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 380(3), 979-985. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.12197.x

November 2, 2010
05:04 PM
633 views

Standing on the shoulders of tyrants

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

There are at least two ways of looking at the history of Science: If we have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. If we have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of tyrants. Take Isaac Newton for example, a giant whose shoulders we all stand on today. [...]... Read more »

Isaac Newton. (1671) A Letter of Mr. Isaac Newton, Professor of the Mathematicks in the University of Cambridge; Containing His New Theory about Light and Colors: Sent by the Author to the Publisher from Cambridge, Febr. 6. 1671/72; In Order to be Communicated to the R. Socie. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 6(69-80), 3075-3087. DOI: 10.1098/rstl.1671.0072

September 3, 2010
06:25 AM
615 views

What happens when you teach monkeys to use money?

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

Freakonomics and its successor Superfreakonomics are two books by the economist Steven Levitt and his partner in crime Stephen Dubner that have a common theme running through them (quote): “People respond to incentives, although not necessarily in ways that are predictable and manifest. Therefore, one of the most powerful laws in the universe is the [...]... Read more »

Lakshminaryanan, V., Chen, M., & Santos, L. (2008) Endowment effect in capuchin monkeys. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 363(1511), 3837-3844. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0149

September 1, 2010
05:17 AM
775 views

How Many Unique Papers Are There In Mendeley?

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

Mendeley is a handy piece of desktop and web software for managing and sharing research papers [1]. This popular tool has been getting a lot of attention lately, and with some impressive statistics it’s not difficult why. At the time of writing Mendeley claims to have over 36 million papers, added by just under half a [...]... Read more »

Victor Henning, & Jan Reichelt. (2008) Mendeley - A Last.fm For Research?. IEEE Fourth International Conference on eScience, 327-328. DOI: 10.1109/eScience.2008.128

July 27, 2010
11:17 AM
591 views

Twenty Million Papers in PubMed: A Triumph or a Tragedy?

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

A quick search on pubmed.gov today reveals that the freely available American database of biomedical literature has just passed the 20 million citations mark*. Should we celebrate or commiserate passing this landmark figure? Is it a triumph or a tragedy that PubMed® is the size it i... Read more »

Halevy, A., Norvig, P., & Pereira, F. (2009) The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 24(2), 8-12. DOI: 10.1109/MIS.2009.36

Torvik VI, & Smalheiser NR. (2009) Author Name Disambiguation in MEDLINE. ACM transactions on knowledge discovery from data, 3(3). PMID: 20072710

Islamaj Dogan R, Murray GC, Névéol A, & Lu Z. (2009) Understanding PubMed user search behavior through log analysis. Database : the journal of biological databases and curation. PMID: 20157491

July 15, 2010
07:00 AM
421 views

How many journal articles have been published (ever)?

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

Earlier this year, the scientific journal PLoS ONE published their 10,000th article. Ten thousand articles is a lot of papers especially when you consider that PLoS ONE only started publishing four short years ago in 2006. But scientists have been publishing in journals for at least 350 years [1] so it might make you wonder, how many articles have been published in scientific and learned journals since time began?... Read more »

Oldenburg, H. (1665) Epistle Dedicatory. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1(1-22). DOI: 10.1098/rstl.1665.0001

Jacsó, P. (2010) Metadata mega mess in Google Scholar. Online Information Review, 34(1), 175-191. DOI: 10.1108/14684521011024191

Jinha, A. (2010) Article 50 million: an estimate of the number of scholarly articles in existence. Learned Publishing, 23(3), 258-263. DOI: 10.1087/20100308

July 7, 2010
03:30 AM
789 views

Top Ten Excuses for World Cup Football Failures (with citations)

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

Football fever grips the globe as we reach the final stages of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Alongside the traditional game where one winning team takes all, leaving 31 losing teams to go home earlier than expected, there is another competition running in parallel. Which losing team can come up with the [...]... Read more »

Travis, K. (2010) Scoring a Career in Sports Science. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.caredit.a1000067

Lucifora, C., & Simmons, R. (2003) Superstar Effects in Sport: Evidence From Italian Soccer. Journal Of Sports Economics, 4(1), 35-55. DOI: 10.1177/1527002502239657

Zak, P., Kurzban, R., Ahmadi, S., Swerdloff, R., Park, J., Efremidze, L., Redwine, K., Morgan, K., & Matzner, W. (2009) Testosterone Administration Decreases Generosity in the Ultimatum Game. PLoS ONE, 4(12). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008330

Elmar Bittner, Andreas Nussbaumer, Wolfhard Janke, & Martin Weigel. (2006) Football fever: goal distributions and non-Gaussian statistics. Eur. Phys. J. B 67, 459 (2009). arXiv: physics/0606016v1

Goff, J., & Carré, M. (2010) Soccer ball lift coefficients via trajectory analysis. European Journal of Physics, 31(4), 775-784. DOI: 10.1088/0143-0807/31/4/007

Kranjec, A., Lehet, M., Bromberger, B., & Chatterjee, A. (2010) A Sinister Bias for Calling Fouls in Soccer. PLoS ONE, 5(7). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0011667

Abell, J. (2010) ‘They seem to think “We're better than you”’: Framing football support as a matter of ‘national identity’ in Scotland and England. British Journal of Social Psychology. DOI: 10.1348/014466610X514200

Wayne C. Naidoo, & Jules R. Tapamo. (2006) Soccer video analysis by ball, player and referee tracking. SAICSIT '06: Proceedings of the 2006 annual research conference of the South African institute of computer scientists and information technologists on IT research in developing countries. DOI: 10.1145/1216262.1216268

June 22, 2010
02:39 AM
574 views

Impact Factor Boxing 2010

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

Roll up, roll up, ladies and gentlemen, Impact Factor Boxing is here again. As with last year (2009), these metrics are already a year out of date. But this doesn’t stop many people from writing about impact factors and it’s been an interesting year [1] for the metrics used by many to judge value of [...]... Read more »

Rizkallah, J., & Sin, D. (2010) Integrative Approach to Quality Assessment of Medical Journals Using Impact Factor, Eigenfactor, and Article Influence Scores. PLoS ONE, 5(4). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0010204

Abbott, A., Cyranoski, D., Jones, N., Maher, B., Schiermeier, Q., & Van Noorden, R. (2010) Metrics: Do metrics matter?. Nature, 465(7300), 860-862. DOI: 10.1038/465860a

Van Noorden, R. (2010) Metrics: A profusion of measures. Nature, 465(7300), 864-866. DOI: 10.1038/465864a

Tibor Braun, Margit Osterloh, Jevin West, Jennifer Rohn, David Pendlebury, Carl Bergstrom, & Bruno Frey. (2010) How to improve the use of metrics. Nature, 465(7300), 870-872. DOI: 10.1038/465870a

Lane, J. (2010) Let's make science metrics more scientific. Nature, 464(7288), 488-489. DOI: 10.1038/464488a

June 3, 2010
02:47 AM
728 views

The smell of baking bread: Entity of the Month

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

Release 69 of Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) is now available, with 584,456 total entities, of which 21,369 are fully annotated to three star level. This months Entity of the Month is the smell of baking bread, or more precisely 6-acetyl-2,3,4,5-tetrahydropyridine. The text below is reproduced from the ChEBI website where data is available [...]... Read more »

Harrison, T., & Dake, G. (2005) An Expeditious, High-Yielding Construction of the Food Aroma Compounds 6-Acetyl-1,2,3,4-tetrahydropyridine and 2-Acetyl-1-pyrroline. The Journal of Organic Chemistry, 70(26), 10872-10874. DOI: 10.1021/jo051940a

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